Jessica Hagy on How to Be Fearless

We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they their good Wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is

Jessica Hagy. Jessica was, I believe, the third guest ever on the One You Feed podcast hundreds of episodes ago. We're super happy to have her back. She's a writer and an artist with many books. They've been translated into over a dozen languages. She's also the winner of a Webby Award for her blog Indexed, and everyone should do themselves a favor and look at these books and these diagrams that she makes, which are simultaneously hilarious, intelligent, thought provoking.

It's hard to explain exactly what she does, so go out and check that out. And today Eric and Jessica will be discussing her book, How to Be Fearless in Seven Simple Steps. Hi, Jessica, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me. We are going to be discussing your book, how to Be Fearless in Seven Simple Steps, And we'll get to that in a minute, and we'll start with a parable in a minute. But I wanted to just say uh to you, thank you because you

were I looked earlier. You were our third guest on this show. You were episode number three that we released, So I appreciate you being willing to come on way back then. It doesn't feel that long ago, to be honest, it stands out to me. Even though it was a long time ago, it still really stands out to me. I just felt like we had a really great connection then. Yeah, and I'm really glad to talk to you again. I'm

happy to talk to you again. Also, I've kept up with your work over the years, which is the other reason to me it doesn't seem like a long time ago. Conversations with you are a little bit interesting because you are a somewhat visual artist. You combine words and diagrams to make really great points, and so for us to have this conversation is I feel like we are getting

one dimension of you, not all your dimensions. So for listeners, I definitely encourage you to go look at Jessica's work because it's the diagrams and the drawings that really bring so much of this alive. It is always interesting to go onto podcasts and sort of try and describe what I do visually, because some people really get it when I talk about it, and some people are more like,

what are you saying? So thank you for that intro. Yes, we will probably put like one of your drawings in the show notes so they're available, but even I don't even know that that will show up in all the podcast players. Anyway, folks, go check out Jessica's stuff. But let's jump in with the parable. There is a grandmother who's talking with her grandson. She says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.

One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grants and stops. And he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandmother. He says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in

the work that you do. I have to say right now, the part of the wolf that I'm really trying to starve out is the wolf that is saying, everything's fine, everything is normal, you can be you can go right back to everything else all as well. And the part that I'm trying to feed is you need to learn

from the past year or so. You need to really metabolize that experience and not just go bolting out the door pretending that everything is just as it was, Because I think we've all been through upheaval and not recognizing that and not letting it impact us is probably the wrong answer to going forward, what might that look like for you? Like, what are the things you need to metabolize?

I think the things I need to metabolize are how my time is spent and where it is spent and who is spent with, and how I can best be my best self, not only to the work I do, which typically pre COVID everything. I was doing work in my space on my own and now I realized, oh, my family is here, how does this impact them? And they're sort of photo chap layer over everything else is

really gotten. I think thicker and less transparent, and embedding myself both deeper and smartly in that space is important. So I don't think I can just go back to working all the time and thinking about things in my own space. But it's more about the weft in the weave of how my time fits with other people's time. Yeah. I think a lot of people are dealing with definitely some. I think upheaval is a good word. Is the world

is opening back up. There are so many opportunities and requests coming at certain people to do so much, and they're having a really hard time sorting out which do I want to do and saying yes, yes, yes, yes, because we're so eager, we haven't had opportunities to do much of anything, and so I know a lot of people are struggling with this and that there is some unease and hard to know how to discern. You know, we haven't had to discern what to do and what

not to do as far as externally in quite some time. Yeah, And I think that sort of cleave between what is important and what is asked of us is something that we actually have to look at now as opposed to I have to do what I need to do, and

now it's what do I really need to do? Because those spaces have been sort of tetris rearranged for everybody and seeing like what you need to do and where you need to be, those questions are different questions and the answers are different questions than we had before they are. I mean, I think being able to ask those questions is always fundamentally important. I think we've got a reset that allows us to ask them in fresher and newer

ways perhaps. Yeah, And I think everybody is kind of sensing a little bit more of their own sort of my fate is more in my control, and I get to say yes to this and no to that, and again it's the wolf feeding parable of what do I really want and what can I do to make that happen? Because so many things that I don't want I realized

are not mandatory right now, right right? Yeah. If your life was full of obligations and things that you didn't want to do, this was a lovely reset period because you can sort of see, like, I guess the world doesn't end if I don't do that, right. Isn't that a freeing moment where you're just like, oh huh, yeah, yea.

So let's jump into your book, How to Be Fearless, And like I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of drawings and diagrams and words, but I want to start with a line from pretty early in the book which says it buried inside every fear is a hope. Say more about that. Yes, absolutely, So. What you are afraid of is what's stopping you from getting to where you need to be, And what you are afraid of is something that is a barrier between you and where you're happy

and comfortable and powerful. Again, and I keep going back to the idea of fear and researching this book and reading all sorts of psychological papers and documents and other books about the idea of being afraid. It all really came down to, you don't have to be brave if you're not fighting anything, and so just being focused on, Okay, this is what I'm after and this is what I'm

going to do. All of a sudden, the things that are around it or behind it, or like getting in your own way really disappear because you focus instead on the actual reason that you're trying to do something. Yeah.

I've heard a different phrasing of that from a teacher of acceptance and commitment therapy, and I think the phrase he used was our values and vulnerability sort of come out of the same vessel, had a lot of alliteration to it, but it speaks to this basic idea that you know, all vulnerabilities can tell us what's valuable to us, what matters to us. Yeah, it brings up the idea of the metaphor of the pearl or of a scar tissue, that just because something has happened to you doesn't mean

you're not stronger because of it. Didn't mean you couldn't build up a beautiful way to get around it and solve for it, and I think the solving for what bothers us is actually like a very foundational point of strength for most people, because without any sort of challenge, we're never going to rise to an occasion of any kind. So step one is to be focused and you say, dwell on what you want instead of what worries you.

I love that idea, and it seems to me that it's a slight pivot of attention, it's not a huge pivot of attention. Those two ideas really are very parallel and m meshed with each other. Because if what you're worried about is not getting to the next level, and what you really want is that next level, it's really up to you to say, Okay, I'm just going to leap frog that and say this is the best I can do, and I'm not going to think about the

things that might hold me back. I'm just going to go and really enjoy what I like to do or what I'm focused on. I'm not going to think about the people who disagree with me or will fight with me, or will belittle me. I'm just going to like leap frog them and do the things that I need to do while keeping this framework of dwell on what you

want instead of what worries you. How would you say, you know that we clearly look at the actual obstacles in our path, right, because we do need to be able to look at obstacles, create strategies, create plans around them, talk a little bit about how we do that without getting into you know, dwelling on what worries us. Yeah, I think talking about this too, and thinking of this

idea globally and not specifically. I really just kept looking at anecdotes of things like, oh, there's a boss that I don't think will help me, or there's a monetary cost that I don't know if I can get around, and again like they are always little creative ways that people will be like, well, I'm going to do it this way. If I want to learn this new thing, I have a library. If I want to be a better person to my spouse, I don't have to go

out of my way. I just have to listen to them or subtle little shifts that whatever is in the way, if you ignore it and really focus on, okay, what I want, then the obstacle itself becomes so much smaller. We usually use those obstacles as excuses as opposed to like actual obstacles, and if we can kind of weave around them creatively with our own sort of greedy love, we can get to where we want to be better.

That's a great phrase, greedy love, because it leads me into another of the ideas from this step one, which is to start with your envy. Envy isn't shameful, it's powerful.

That's an interesting take on it. Yeah, I've always seen people, especially in the art space, where they find something that's just absolutely gorgeous and wonderful and they're like, I wish I had painted that, I wish I had written that, I wish I had done that already, And instead of getting angry about it, the really good artists I see are just like, I'm going to take my own methodologies

and media and do something more like that. And that's that sort of motivation, because you don't know what you can be until you see it somewhere else that gives you that next step up. And envying and wanting and admiring things, I think is something that we're told we shouldn't do as opposed to something we should seek out and use for fuel for all of our endeavors, right, you know, at least in my experience, there's a couple of I don't know if the word I would use

as caveats to that, but additional thoughts on that. You know, One is, You've got a diagram somewhere in the book, and I can't remember where, But you talk about a culture that commoditizes us, and we live in a culture that commoditizes everything, and a culture that markets relentlessly to our needs and our wants and very quickly makes us

want things that don't really bring us happiness. And so it's funny like I have often resisted watching television because for me, I feel like I am easily manipulated into wanting something that if I didn't see it, I would never think I wanted it. But you show it to me on TV and this special light, and I'm all

of a sudden like, oh, maybe I need that. And so I think that idea of envy, I agree it is powerful in the right way, and I think it takes some real discernment to know what's real envy, or to say it slightly differently, what's the real desire of my heart versus what I'm sort of sold into believe in is the desire of my heart. Oh yeah, So much of advertising is telling us too that we have

flaws that need fixed. Whereas before we've seen the advertisement were like I didn't know that was something that could be even wrong with me, like oh what. But when we see something I think that like deeply prompts us to be like wow, that is magnificent, it tends not to be the things that were like oh I could probably use a snuggy around the campfire, or yeah I could, I could get that shampoo or something shallow like that. But the things that deeply trigger us aren't things that

we can acquire. There are things we want to be, and I think of really good advertising makes us think that if we have something, will be someone else, and being someone else matters so much more to people than having something else. Yeah. I also heard a concept about envy, the type that you're describing, and it was basically, when you think that you look at something, you're like, wow, that was I really want to be like that I

want and it feels like it's in range. That sort of envy is empowering and we go, yes, I can do that, and yet if it feels out of range doesn't motivate us. It demotivates us because we look at and go, no, way, can't get there? Yeah, what's applicable versus impossible? And what is something I can be versus something that I've been told I can't be? I think two is that's a level of fear, which is someone saying you should know your place, and your place is

not where you aspire to be. And if people can say none at no, I'm going to do exactly what I think is beautiful and wonderful and helpful, and I'm going to go be that person. And that's important because so much of advertising and marketing and Instagram and Facebook, this is your place. The algorithm has told you this is your place and this is what you should want. And when we really are moved by actual feelings and wants and needs, those don't align with that algorithm at all.

You keep referring to being the person we want to be. And I'm curious if that word is very intentional, because very often when I'm teaching about values or intentions, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about the person I want to be, not necessarily what I'm going to accomplish right, I might say I want to be a person that makes beautiful art versus I want to be an artist that has five million Instagram followers. Those are really different things.

Which is and I think too that I think the person who makes the beautiful things because half the time, even if you talk to the people who are super super famous or wealthy or anything, they're still just looking for that satisfaction of the little flame inside me says this is who you are. And if I haven't fed that flame, if that little wolf is starving, then the rest of all of the exterior wealth and success doesn't matter at all. So, yeah, we're really talking about qualities

of being and what we do. Yeah, and doing this entire book, it was I can get extremely academic and weirdly like old school philosophy, and like how do I translate that or how do I take those ideas and

put them into formats that everybody can understand? And I think part of the whole process was really saying what are people feeling and how can I tap into that and pivot that a little bit, as opposed to dropping all sorts of Okay, so this is the historical context for your need right now and playing with ideas on that spectrum of very difficult to very approachable was something that I really played with a lot. Yeah, Yeah, it's definitely on the very approachable side. I think that's the

nature of some of your work. I think by boiling things down to diagrams, you cut through a lot of historical precedent and theory and all this different stuff, and you you boil it down to its essence. Yeah. If I can draw a diagram with three words that I think summarizes Lickenstein, then okay, cool, got it, And then you would never know that that was the origin of

the idea behind that. And I think that is my job is to make interesting ideas that I come across really really approachable and palatable and metabolizeable for anybody who reads what I put out. Staying on this idea of hope a little bit, you know, hope animates what fear paralyzes. Hope builds what fear destroys. What are some ways that we build that hope? You know, we talked about one envy being one looking at what we want, But what

are ways to build that hope? Because sometimes that hope seems very fragile exactly, And I think hope as an idea is more of a directionality. So you can be in a boat and looking way out at the horizon, and the horizon continues to move as you move. It's just a function of the physics of how we are. But looking out and saying I will get there, and having just a point somewhere to aim for gives us

an anchor on what we're doing. If we don't have something that we're working toward, aiming toward, learning about, trying to get better at, then we'll just sort of paddle everywhere and it will just be treading water and you'll want to sink because there's nowhere to go. But as long as you do have somewhere to go, then all of a sudden, there's a purpose to what you're working on, and that is a very animating feeling. Yeah, you have a line in there. Make plans to make progress, you know.

I would say a lot of the work I do with coaching clients is exactly that we're making plans so that we can make progress. And there's a couple of really important points to that. I mean, one is, without a plan, like you said, I'm paddling everywhere. If I don't have a plan, it's hard to use my time. Well, there's a whole bunch of reasons, but the other is if I have a plan in that land has some milestones I can sort of see like, oh, I'm making progress.

You know. I started working with a coach again at the beginning of this year because I needed some of that. I felt like I needed some clearer progress points that I could say, yes, we're moving in the right direction, because the movements, at least at the stage that we're at, their harder for me to discern. Yeah, and I think too, even if you pick the wrong endpoint, you still go somewhere and you still learn something, and you can change

direction at any time. But just having that momentum of I'm going to read this book, I'm going to learn this idea, I'm going to figure out how this software works. Some small accomplishment motivates you to do more small accomplishments until all of a sudden you've done something huge and changed all sorts of things about your life. And it's just by making those like little steps like I'm going to do this thing, I'm going to do that thing, I'm gonna make this happen and they don't have to

be massive, they just have to be satisfied. Right. Step two is be hopeful. And I've been talking about hope all the time, way ahead of time. I'm completely out of order here, but you have a line there that I love. When fear tries to anchor you to a

miserable moment, it's hope that will help you move on. Yeah. Yeah, I think when we do have those voices in our head and those recurring thoughts of you're trying to go to sleep and you think everything's fine, and then your brains like, you know how badly you like totally screwed that up that one time, and you're like, oh no, and that's the thing that you keep thinking about as opposed to the hundreds of times since that you've done

really magnificent things. And I think our brains, I don't know why, are just wired for that sort of Maybe if we're aware of the missteps we've made, we won't make them again. Maybe it's a protective mechanism. But the idea of no thinking of the other things you can do is so much are useful and kinetic. Yeah, not to turn this into a conversation about me, but I was having a conversation with my coach the other day about this very thing, and I was reflecting these concerns

about the changing media landscape. The media landscape is changing and small independent producers are getting squeezed people like us, you know, tons of money coming into blah blah blah. So I'm worried about that, which is a valid thing to be worried about. And he just said, but why do you think you're not going to figure that out? You've figured every other change out for the last seven years. You've navigated all the challenges that have come up. Why

is it that you think this one you won't. And I didn't have a really good answer to that, except, you know, yeah, it's that human tendency to sort of look for what's wrong. I've become more and more clear on how that negativity bias that we're wired with really impacts us. You know, it's our nature, that's what the brain is doing. It's like a problem, problem problem anywhere, you know, looking for problems. And so this idea of instead of when I'm looking at my doubts is to

sort of repeat my hopes. Yeah, and I think too that we're so afraid of because our world right now is so precarious that if you make one mistake, oh, you could fall off a cliff suddenly, or oh you could lose your entire career and everything you have in your home and your family and everything like one mistake, instead of feeling like no, everything you've already built is a really solid foundation, and you have friends and colleagues and work, and you're going to be more okay than

you think because of all you've done and all the people you've already reached. And that sort of idea of safety and progress is really in complete opposite to what our brain tells us, and what our culture tells us, and what our economy tells us about what our trajectories could be. I'm going to get us through all seven

steps here, believe it or not. A step three is be resourceful, And I'm going to pull one line out from there, and then I would love to just ask you what you'd like to talk about from that section. But the line that struck me as resourcefulness is the art of finding treasure everywhere. So the idea of resourcefulness is the idea of creativity for people who don't think

they're creative. Resourcefulness is oh, I know how to use these tools that I already have, or I know who to call to get this done, or I know how this supply chain works, and I'm going to access this point to get what you need to you at what time. And people, when they hear the word resourceful, they say, oh, I can do that. I can tap into things, I can tap into resources, I can work with what I have. But if you say creative, people say, oh, I'm not

an artist. I don't paint, And they're the same sort of words when we get into the idea of building anything like building your life or building your project or building a goal, and resourcefulness really is that sort of I'm going to observe and I'm going to apply, and I'm just going to be the most human human I can be, because I think that's kind of the crux of what we are as creatures is we find things and we turn them into tools, and we turn those

tools into entire civilizations. And we've all got that going for us. Anything else about resourcefulness you want to add, Yeah, I think a lot of people will think, like, I don't have anything. I don't have the privileges or the upbringings or the assets that I need to do what I want to do. But so much of finding your way out of that core of thinking is saying I was raised by amazing people. I was put in this

beautiful place. I can call up on this and that, and I can figure this out, and my brain itself is a magical, powerful computer, and I'm going to get this done. And that sort of proud resourcefulness that is unexpected in so many of us is really what's going to propel us out of a fearful, frozen state and into a really active, impressive space. Right, and tying that back to hope. Right, when we have of hope, we are I think, naturally more resourceful. Right. If I have

some degree of hope, I'm willing to sort of keep looking. Yes, I'm willing to keep looking for treasure. Whereas if I'm believing all my doubts, it only takes the first roadblock for me to go see, I couldn't I told you, you you know, I knew I couldn't do it, And so I never get the chance to be resourceful because the first block confirms the doubt that I am really living into. Instead of keeping my eye on the hopefulness and going Okay, all right, that didn't work. What what about trying this?

And okay, now let's try this, and all right, what if I, you know, looked at it this way? And there was a metaphor about a guy with a metal detector, and it's like, well, he only has the metal detector because he thinks he might find something, and he only sweeps it back and forth seven thousand times across this beach every morning, and he hasn't failed every sweep he makes. But on that like seventy morning when he finds a huge piece of gold, was he wrong the other days

and other thousands of sweeps. No, like you proved himself for doing it and keeping with it and knowing that if he kept up with what he thought he could do, he would get it done. Step four is b earnest. Do not be afraid to admit you care deeply. Your intense emotions are your most precious power. Boy, I know a lot of people who think they're intense emotions are a real problem. Yeah, but so many of us take any emotion we have and are just like, I shouldn't

feel that. I'm wrong to feel that. And the intensity, even if it's an ugly emotion like anger or rage or just greed or lust, those feelings are valid feelings and look at it and examine it and say, why am I feeling this? Who am I deep inside? What

can I do with this feeling? As opposed to the people who swallow and deny themselves the truth of what they actually want to do or need to do or feel, and the repressing of I need this, I need to do this, I shouldn't do this is as scary as some like actual rage sometimes right, And as a person who has wrestled with depression a lot of his adult life, which I think, if I had to make a guess, has some roots in a constant repression for for the better part of my you know, my first twenty years.

Strong emotion is an energy you can work with. It's a tool. It's absolutely a tool. Yeah, it provides energy. Whereas you know, lack of emotion deadness, my experience has been has been a harder thing to work with and transform. Not that it can't be done, not that there's not something there, but it's a much lower frequency vibration and so it's almost like you have to amplify the signal then transform it. Whereas if you've got plenty of signal,

it's just about transforming it. Yeah, that numbness is a very frightening place to be because when you're just like, is this is this it? And am I trapped here? And it's just a quick, sandy feeling, where at least if you have something intense and powerful that is, this is telling me something. I'm responding to a stimuli somehow, I'm still here, I'm still my body is paying attention somehow, even if my mind doesn't know what to do with

what my body is telling it. And when I've got like something like intense, or if I really care about something powerfully, I shouldn't be afraid to let that out and express it. Otherwise the status quo continues on and all we do is just sort of suffer along with it, and that numbness intensifies right right now. I think it gets back to that idea of buried inside every fear is a hope, or buried inside every strong negative emotion is a desire for something. Yeah, if you're feeling alone,

you need something. If you're feeling angry, you need to solve a problem. If you're feeling absolutely depressed and isolated, you need support and backup. And sometimes we're so in the gray of those feelings that we don't see the contrast there. If it is really dark, there must be a really light side of this. And thinking of it in that sort of like curious hero visual sense of what our feelings look like, we can almost like track

or like filter our way through the other. Thing with the earnest that you say is excuses, doubts, and procrastination are forms of fear. Let me rank these excuses. I think people might go maybe doubts, Sure, yeah, that's a form of fear. Procrastination. I don't know, is it? Yeah? I think when I was trying to figure out, why do people sort of resist taking action or resist doing

something that they think they might fail at. And we'll put up all of these sort of like really off blocks around ourselves, like a puffy armor of well, I'm really busy and I really can't and I shouldn't and I don't do karaoke, But instead of just saying like I really want this and going for it and saying this is important to me, because I think those admissions feel really arrogant, and they feel really greedy, and they feel really who the hell do you think you are

saying that? And a lot of us if we do say it's important to me and I'm myself and I'm going to go get that, and saying that to ourselves more than anyone else is what will get us into those spaces where we stop questioning is it okay for me to want this right? Right? And I do a lot of work with people on procrastination, and you know, procrastination, some of it is, you know, back to your point

earlier about make plans to make progress. I think we procrastinate when we don't quite know what to do, when we're not sure the path forward, when there's ambiguity, you know, so, so clarity is really important. But then the next element really is procrastination because we're afraid we can't do it. We're just afraid we just don't have what it takes to do it. And do you find people are progressing out of a fear of failure or a fear of success?

Because I think it's kind of like an equal balance half the time where you're just like, what are you really like putting off here? I think I see more fear of failure that tends to be more what I see. But I think fear of success is nebulous because it's harder to name what exactly am I afraid of with success? What does that look like for you? Well, so, even thinking about what an art project is going to look like at the end, I'm like, Oh, it has to be this in my brain, and then I do it

and it looks different. Did I fail or did I succeed in a different way? And I think that's something that a lot of a lot of us actually have to think about, like did I really fail at this or did I just do something else really well? And I don't think we give ourselves enough credit for I did this absolutely different thing really really well because I kept doing something. That's a fear of success because you have to succeed in a certain way and anything else.

If you're really, really, really just like zeroed in on that one little nebulous thing, all the other things just disappear and are worthless all of a sudden, and refocusing on oh, what I'm doing is actually really really useful and helpful, and it's okay that it's not what I thought it would be. You say, go to where fear cannot find you. Your happiest place is a safe harbor from fear. What do you mean by our happiest place? Do you mean literally go to a place I like

to be? Do you mean imagine a place in my mind? Say more about that. I think everyone has their own place where they feel secure and safe and allowed to be themselves and do what is like innate to them. And for some people, it's with other people who understand them. It's with their found family. It's in a place where they feel safe and unguarded. It's in a workspace where they're supported. And when you think of what is your happy place, something will spring to your mind and you're like, yeah,

I know what that. I know what that feels like. It could be an embrace, it could be a chair. It could be some park that only ten people in the city know about, but everybody knows exactly quickly where their place is. Yeah. There's a type of meditation called I rest and it's been used with a lot of veterans, a lot of people with PTSD, and it really is an interesting meditation protocol because it pulls multiple different what

I would consider meditation types together into one. But one of the exercises is sort of defining your happy place, and in it it's actually you think of a place. It's a technique that you do in your mind to sort of ground and settle you. It's a retreat without having to go anywhere. In essence, I've always found it

an interesting idea. I was reading about habits like that, and one of the things was when you know, when you are truly embodying or like feeling your way through a place, you know what it smells like, feels like, your temperature changes, everything about your experience becomes of that place.

And that's true of if you're triggered to think of something horrible or triggered to think of something absolutely soothing and welcoming, and just practicing that a little bit, it really is like, oh, even my heartbeat changes when I think about different locations where I could physically be, and it's it's a super powerful thing to put in your brain. Absolutely. Step five is be connected. Connections with others are a

powerful defense against fear. Say a little more about that. Yes, The one thing that I kept coming up on when I was reading about what are we afraid? What are we working against? Out sphere manifesting us and isolation was a key component of it triggers all the fear and all the like deep depression and terrible just I don't know what to do because I can't talk to anyone about it, and I don't know how to be because

I don't have anyone to echo off of. And being out and about and learn, earning of different places where I could exist or different communities where I could join in. That really sort of again, it's an anchoring system of I belong here, I can do this in this space. And again, just even going through all of the Okay, this is what COVID is doing to people, This is what lockdown is doing to people. This is how isolation is affecting people who age out of friend groups because

all of their friends pass away. How do we work with the very elderly or the very isolated and all of those ideas really where just one person can totally change how you react because you have one connection, you have one bullet point, you have one anchor, and finding those anchors just is amazingly powerful. Yeah. I heard a statistic the other day that I thought, can that be true? And then I said that to someone else's and I heard the statistic, and can that be true, and they're like, oh, yeah,

it's true. So again, I don't know if it's true, but a couple of people validated it. Now is that, for the first time in history, the loneliest age group is like sixteen to twenty three. It was always the elderly. It's been the elderly for as long as anybody knows, and now it is the people that you would think of as having the most opportunity for connection and yet still being really lonely. So I don't know if they're more lonely than the elderly, but even the fact that

it's that, if it's even close, is worrisome. I think reading a lot of I have to do a lot of school work to get into college. College is so important. If I don't do college, what do I do. I can't go and hang out with everyone because everyone's already

doing their things. But I'm connected to everyone on social media, which is just making me feel more isolated because everyone is doing things that I can't tell or real or not, and the other people that I don't really know on social media are doing things that don't even seem real at all. Who are you like? You're just trying to grow up and meet people and become who you are and your bombardi with you should be this and that

and the other thing. And meanwhile, there's no one in real life to bounce it off of and say, it's this true? Is this is who you are? Like? What am I doing? What are you doing? What are we doing? Are we somebody? And I can totally see that that statistic rings true. Yeah, yeah, I find this idea. I think anybody who pays attention knows that loneliness isolation is incredibly bad for us. We're told it's worse than smoking three packs of cigarettes and whatever. I don't know if

it's three packs, but it's not good yet. It's one of those things that I think if you're in it, it's really hard to find your way out of m I think the loneliest I've ever felt was when I was surrounded by people at work, at school, at everywhere, but I didn't have anyone that was my deep, true friend.

And finding someone that gets you, or even being out in the world and not having to perform a role that you've been told you have to perform, then you can connect with real p will who will be like, oh, it's it's you. Of course, that's a strangely freeing thing, is to just leave everyone who makes you feel lonely and find people who don't. And that is a strangely accidental process I found almost the entire time, and the idea of being open to the serendipity of others is

half the battle. If you walk into a room and you say I'm going to just be myself and hopefully that works and other people do the same, that's how you end up with like really goofy, weird conversations and oh, hello, it's you. Of course it is. Yes, let's be friends. It goes against all of the you must behave yourself and look exactly right at all times sort of advice, which I don't think it has ever worked for a

real connection. No, No, real connection takes some degree of, like you said, being yourself yet and the vulnerability of going against all the training you've taken from from everything that's made you lonely, the Instagram and the performance and the professionalism aspects of our lives and just shedding that and being I'm a human being. Hi. Yeah. We have

this spiritual Habits program. It's a group program, and we take the big group and divide it up into smaller groups, and one of the most satisfying things for me has been watching some of those small groups form and become real friendships that endure over time. I think the element

there is, yeah, somebody takes a chance. You know. Somebody was just telling me about we did a breakout group in one of our Sunday sessions and somebody said, we got into this breakout room and like, right out of the gate, one person just shared this incredibly vulnerable thing and boom, the whole room lit up and came alive. And I feel like I have four new friends, you know, because one person was willing to do it. That's beautiful.

That's one of those magical sort of Oh, this is maybe how civilization started, right, Like, oh, it didn't happen because we called a meeting on zoom and we had five people talk about three bullet points. No, it was more just Hi, I'm here and this is part of me, and other people are like, oh, I'm here, and here's a part of me too. And those parts are sticky. Yeah.

And you talk about be connected as a way of helping with being fearless, and you know, one of things I found really helpful about connection is that I've had the opportunity to interview lots of really amazing people. And what's been really great for me is I've realized, like they're all afraid sometimes, no matter how successful they've been there, like I have written five New York Times bestsellers, but this time I'm going to fall flat on my face. Yeah,

and it's very normalizing. You go, oh yeah, even these people I look up to have these things. And so that's what you know. Connection can be so powerful. Um you say, fear isolates, shames, segregates, and weakens us. Fearlessness is togetherness. Yeah, And like you said, like knowing that people you look up to our human and fragile as well, that fills in the gaps in you, and it lets them say I have gaps, and I don't have to pretend I don't. Because people who put off that sort

of I'm an expert, I'm infallible. That feels automatically doubtful, you know, because you're like, no, you're just you're somebody, right, Like where's your somebody? Yes? Having that bit of no, we're all just silly and we think that we're flukes and we think that everything good that's happened to us has been accidental and unearned and oh no, and everyone when everyone's like oh me too, that me too moment

is is useful. Yeah. I had a client. We were talking about imposter syndrome and she worked in academia, and she said, you know, imposter syndrome and academia is a big thing. And so we had a workshop on impostor syndrome and they came in and they asked us to take this quiz, you know, rank yourself on impostor syndrome. Right, the person who scored the highest was the head of the department with all the PubL ish papers that everybody

looked up to. And I just found that to be such a telling story of like, I'm sure everybody else in the room was like, I'm the impostor, he's the real deal, right, And he still felt the same thing.

And what does it tell us that all of the messages that we're receiving can contradict our own absolute bullet points on a resume truths of ourselves, Like if everything out there is saying like you don't matter and you're wrong and you're faking it and you haven't earned this, like we have to give everybody that we meet, like so much slack for being everybody, because we've all been

told that we're not enough. And if we just assume that everybody else is fantastic, we're probably going to be right. If we just assume everybody else is fantastic, we're probably going to be right. I don't know who it was at the quote. I feel like it was Nelson Mandela, like it never hurts to believe the best in someone will often be proved right or No, I think it's they'll often act the better because of it, right, like you.

I mean, if you're going to go into a room and set up some expectations, why not just assume everything's great and then no one feels ashamed of worry. Like that's a huge gift to give to somebody, totally, And you know, what you just said there reminds me of there's this general idea that so much of what we're talking about here are the stories that we create. I can do it or I can't do it. No one knows. The future is not written so by nature. If I say I can do it, I'm making up a story.

And if I say I can't do it, I'm making up a story. It's not there's no fact, there's no reality, there's no truth. And so if we're making it up, you know, if I walk into a room full of people and I'm like, those people are jerks, that's a story. If I say they're all wonderful people, same thing. Why

not pick ones that empower us? Yeah, and when we if we do assume all sorts of abilities and trust in other people, that's probably going to build us a better foundation of whatever it is we're trying to do. Then assuming people are stupid out to get us bad and it doesn't do us any good, it just makes us more terrified of everyone else, as opposed to just saying, oh, I've got six people in this room, we've got this. I don't need to know what they're capable of, but

there are six of us. We've got it done. Yeah. Absolutely, Well, we did not get through all seven points. A matter of fact, we got through five and a half. So we're going to finish the last two points. Okay, we have we have two and a half points to get through. We're going to do it in the post show conversation. And these are two of my favorite points. Be aware and be curious, So we'll do that in the post

show conversation listeners. If you'd like access to that post show conversation to a special episode I do each week called a teaching song and a poem. Add free episodes and other member benefits as well as the joy of supporting and independent podcast. Go to one you feed dot net slash join and you can get all those details there. Jessica, thank you so much for taking the time to come

on the show. It's been a real pleasure. I was so happy to have you on four hundred episodes or something ago, and I am so glad to have you back. Congratulations on episodes. That's stunning. I hadn't realized it was that many. It's an awful lot. It's something like that. Um. Anyway, thank you so much for for coming back on. We'll have links to your information in the show notes and again listeners. If you don't see your diagrams, you're missing

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